


summer of '98

by eratedgore



Category: One Piece
Genre: Death, Gen, Morbid, Pre-Canon, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23951740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eratedgore/pseuds/eratedgore
Summary: Robin does and doesn't think about death.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	summer of '98

**Author's Note:**

> weather's getting warmer  
> wrote this in like five minutes because i can't stop thinking about this meme https://asexualzoro.tumblr.com/post/189997993998/i-forgot-to-post-this-yesterday

It is easy, Robin thinks, to kill a person. With no natural armor or weapons at their disposal, people are vulnerable. They struggle and fight to survive, but death is inevitable, especially when you are fleshy and weak. People can take up arms or gain special powers to protect themselves, but no one is safe forever. Not if you lie in wait, or act quickly. Not if you come in with guns blazing, or if you arrive without a sound. Not if you are simply ready to kill.

There’s nothing to it, really.

Sweat drips down her back. Her hair feels hot against her scalp, and strands stick to her neck. The black asphalt is still burns, even in the shade of the awning, radiating heat upwards.

There’s nothing to killing, and nothing to dying. It is easy to want to kill, and it’s easy to not even think about it. Living and dying are separated by an infinitely thin line. People are afraid of the emptiness of death. The absence of consciousness terrifies them, as though they didn’t experience the blankness of being born. If anything, living and being aware of anything at all is much more horrifying than not knowing anything at all.

There’s no comfortable way to stand in the heat like this. There’s no way to do anything at all. She’s never hated the heat, though. She’s never been comfortable in the first place. Summer comes and goes, like all the other seasons and years do. Her stomach acid begins to boil. Flies buzz around her head, seeking refuge in her sweat. They strike her hair, like trying to light a match.

Something approaches.

Everything, everything, everything dies. At any time or place, there will be something dying. Flowers wilting, animals on the side of the road with their stomachs and mouths open. Eating each other, being eaten. Human anatomy: organs you can and cannot remove. Cicadas crying off in the distance. Hands, moving, twisting. Eyes, bulging.

It will always be cooler on a ship. The ocean absorbs heat differently than land does. The wind blows, because if it doesn’t, you’re stranded at sea. Eating, being eaten. Falling in, sinking like a stone. Highs and lows of pressure form, and the wind blows. Robin thinks of the ocean.

All of her hands are sweaty. It does not take much force to twist a neck, not when you have enough hands. In this heat, any stench would intensify, and it would seep into her clothes, her sweat drenched shirt and cotton skirt, and it would say more than blood ever could. Shame, shame, shame. Girls don’t stink. They are like flowers. Pretty when alive, and when they wilt, people write poems about them. When Robin dies, she won’t leave a body. She doesn’t leave a smell.

It’s easy to kill a person. It’s easy to die.

She looks up into the blue sky, sweat nearly dripping into her eyes. Not a cloud in sight.

It is hot.


End file.
